{"id":34461,"date":"2017-02-12T10:02:54","date_gmt":"2017-02-12T18:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/a-vision-to-bootstrap-the-solar-system-economy"},"modified":"2017-04-25T19:59:12","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T02:59:12","slug":"a-vision-to-bootstrap-the-solar-system-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/a-vision-to-bootstrap-the-solar-system-economy","title":{"rendered":"A Vision to Bootstrap the Solar System Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-vision-to-bootstrap-the-solar-system-economy.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Early probes are one thing, but can we build a continuing presence among the stars, human or robotic? An evolutionary treatment of starflight sees it growing from a steadily expanding presence right here in our Solar System, the kind of infrastructure Alex Tolley examines in the essay below. How we get to a system-wide infrastructure is the challenge, one analyzed by a paper that sees artificial intelligence and 3D printing as key drivers leading to a rapidly expanding space economy. The subject is a natural for Tolley, who is co-author (with Brian McConnell) of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Water-Based-Spacecraft-Spacecoach-SpringerBriefs-Development\/dp\/3319226762\/ref=as_li_ss_il?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1484917403&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=design+for+a+reusable+water-based+spacecraft&amp;linkCode=li2&amp;tag=lifeboatfound-20&amp;linkId=54db2bb50a33ac37efef822d0411ab25\">A Design for a Reusable Water-Based Spacecraft Known as the Spacecoach<\/a> (Springer, 2016). An ingenious solution to cheap transportation among the planets, the Spacecoach could readily be part of the equation as we bring assets available off-planet into our economy and deploy them for even deeper explorations. Alex is a lecturer in biology at the University of California, and has been a Centauri Dreams regular for as long as I can remember, one whose insights are often a touchstone for my own thinking.<\/p>\n<p>By Alex Tolley<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:none;\" src=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-vision-to-bootstrap-the-solar-system-economy.jpg\" alt=\"alexgetty_2x\" width=\"275\" height=\"366\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centauri-dreams.org\/?p=36963\">http:\/\/www.centauri-dreams.org\/?p=36963<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early probes are one thing, but can we build a continuing presence among the stars, human or robotic? An evolutionary treatment of starflight sees it growing from a steadily expanding presence right here in our Solar System, the kind of infrastructure Alex Tolley examines in the essay below. How we get to a system-wide infrastructure [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,3,39,41,6,8,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-biological","category-economics","category-information-science","category-robotics-ai","category-space","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34461"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55857,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34461\/revisions\/55857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}